As electronic communications systems continue to advance, the need to tightly integrate these systems has also increased. Electronic mail (e-mail), voice mail, electronic organizers and date books, and local and wide area networks, are just a few of the communication technologies that are vital to the success of businesses and other organizations in the modern world. Many of these communication systems and services (e.g., e-mail, professional contacts, company databases and calendaring systems) are accessible only to users while at the office through a corporate infrastructure such as provided by Microsoft Exchange™. This tends to promote inefficiency because more people are conducting business while on the road or away from their offices (e.g., using wireless phones). Thus, the challenge to effectively coordinate communication among different devices (e.g., personal computers, mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistant's (PDA's), etc.) and over different communications media so that people genuinely have effective access to one another is taking on a growing importance.
Recently, the focus has been on trying to develop technology that provides users with greater functionality and access to other communications systems through their telephone. U.S. Pat. No. 6,047,053 entitled “Network based knowledge assistant” discloses a computer-implemented entity that assists a subscriber with his or her communications by carrying out tasks that are delegated to it. Although the electronic assistant can handle certain calls using a variety of different communication devices, one drawback of this type of system is it is unable to readily access corporate information systems, such as Microsoft Exchange™. In addition, it does not allow a user to perform more sophisticated communication tasks (e.g., compose e-mail messages by phone using text-to-speech recognition).